


Got to Do What You Love

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Badass Normals, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, M/M, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:37:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil has control issues, Clint has power issues, and the Avengers are a bundle of issues. It’s no wonder Maria wants nothing to do with them. Phil doesn’t seem to have a choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got to Do What You Love

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Note:** There's some brief discussion of past Phil/OMC which was clearly an unhealthy relationship although I don't _think_ it requires further warnings. Let me know if you think otherwise, or if you want more information.

“We could always separate them,” Phil offers idly. “You take half and I take half.”

Maria knocks back a shot. “You’re making the mistake of believing I want anything to do with them.”

“What if I gave you first pick?”

She considers this for a second or two. “Rogers.”

Phil glares at her. “You’re just saying that so I have to take Stark.” Those two are currently not allowed to be in the same room, let alone the same team. The latest incident had involved one count of hacking into every speaker system in the building to play a certain patriotic song, and one count of testing an experimental motorcycle so vigorously that it’s now a pile of scrap metal. 

Maria is unrepentant. “Yes.”

“Hawkeye,” he says, surprising her momentarily. He doesn’t have to pick Stark _first_.

Maria says, “Widow.” 

“And again…” Phil sighs. “Fine. Banner, because your half needs someone with flight capability.”

“So I get Thor, and you take Stark.” She smirks. “Stark, Barton, and Banner. Was it worth it?”

It says something about Phil that even in Avengers fantasy camp, he still ends up with a team that couldn’t reasonably be trusted to cross a street without turning into a danger to the surrounding blocks. He takes his own drink. “Okay. You keep running the strike teams of ruthlessly disciplined agents. I’ll be over here with best and the brightest.”

Maria clinks her glass with his. “Good.”

Phil’s phone starts to buzz. He looks at the screen for three rings before answering it. “Coulson… What? Yes, we’re coming back in. Mobilise the jet to grab Rogers, he’s out on leave.”

Maria’s phone started ringing midway through Phil’s conversation. She says, “Let’s get a perimeter set-up, I want two units in and two on stand-by. I’ll check in with Coulson myself.” She hangs up. “You get all that?”

“Still sure you don’t want to take half-ownership of my sideshow?”

“Absolutely sure.” 

In truth, Phil had expected that answer. He stands up. “Then I suppose we should get to work.”

 

*

All things being equal, Phil doesn’t mind that most of his ops are domestic nowadays. He would take a wild goose chase in Greenland over a rampage in Midtown, but that’s more about potential civilian casualties than his desire to travel. He has done most of the travelling a person could want. Still, given New York rain and a mission that seems to have covered the streets in green mud ( _Golem?_ he notes in pencil on the margins of his report) Phil misses the desert.

Rogers stands to attention opposite Phil’s desk, even in the field centre in the back of a truck. “So, once we exploded the… mud-man… then it seemed like we should probably call in for further instructions.”

“I think the moment to call for instruction would be when you discovered that the problem _was_ a mud-man, instead of the more prosaic ‘possible Iron Man wannabe’ being reported.” Phil doesn’t know how mud and iron could be confused for each other, but this is why they send their own eyes in to every reported incident. 

Rogers opens his mouth to respond to this, but he’s interrupted by the door opening. Phil assumes that it’s Sitwell and looks down at the desk to find the field readings to give him.

“Phil, can I-.” Clint stops. “Sorry, Agent Coulson, I didn’t realise you were…”

“What is it, Barton?” Phil asks.

He sounds uncomfortable. “I was going to see if I could borrow a jacket.”

Phil faces him properly. Clint is dripping wet and shivering. He looks like someone tried to drown him. Phil frowns. “You have a jacket,” he reminds Clint. “I’ve seen it. Black, SHIELD logo on the shoulder, matches the rest of your uniform.”

“I know.”

“If you’ve left it somewhere again, it’s coming out of your pay.”

Rogers gives them a strange look. “It’s on the couch. At- you left it back there.”

Clint shoots him a quick strained smile. Despite the lack of ‘sir’, he’s more formal around Rogers than he ever was with Phil. That’s definitely something that warrants investigation, but at the moment Phil is more concerned about possible hypothermia. Clint says, “I know where it is. I just didn’t bring it with me.”

“Barton,” Phil says.

“In my defence, I wasn’t cold until-.” Until the rain, and then the mud explosion where Clint had been a chief instigator. “And then Tony claimed he was worried about biological contaminants and threw more water at me.”

Phil is already getting his coat off the back of his chair. He tosses it at Clint. “Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

Clint shrugs it on, huddling into the wool. He protests half-heartedly, “I didn’t mean _your_ coat, sir. I thought there might be a windbreaker or something in supplies.” 

Phil rolls his eyes. “Go check the perimeter. We’re heading back in twenty.”

Clint nods and goes back out into the rain.

Rogers is still looking. “You two have been working together for a long time.” It’s not a question. 

“Yes,” Phil says. Long enough that it’s not the first time he’s seen Clint in his clothes, or dripping wet. Long enough that there’s not much of Clint he hasn’t seen. Although that all seems a long time ago now. Now there is pre-Avengers and post-Avengers, and anything pre seems like ancient history. Phil supposes that may be for the best.

 

*

Phil should know better. He admits, fully and completely, that this is the reason they have containment protocols. Phil will write his own reprimand if he needs to. But he won’t beat himself up about it. He has never made this kind of mistake before, and he won’t make it again. He had been distracted.

Phil doesn’t know where they all get the impression that he likes this kind of thing. He does not, in fact, have some deep-down devotion towards handling clean-up. This is especially the case when it’s Avengers related clean-up, which tends to extend across city-blocks. Phil doesn’t like dealing with this. He likes, in no particular order: certain brands of bad reality television; a good ninth-inning rally; breaking in junior agents who are still a little scared of him; and the times he has woken in the morning to find that someone else has cooked him breakfast.

Phil works the clean-up because he is considered good at it, and it is easier than trying to delegate. The Avengers, to a man (or woman) don’t deal well with these tasks.

Phil spots something shining underneath the rubble and though it looks too small to be destructive, it’s still clearly made, intact, not part of the explosion. When he pushes the masonry aside, it looks like two heavy metal rings, and he thinks that maybe Stark has lost a piece of his suit. Phil takes out a handkerchief to pick them up but when they touch, they start humming with a sound like a tuning fork. He tries to drop them but it’s already too late. Metal unwinds and creeps up Phil’s hands to settle around his wrists. The metal warms against his skin and when he turns to call someone – decontamination, R&D, the Director - there’s a rush of white light too close to his eyes and a bang from somewhere up above him.

Everything goes silent for a moment until Stark breaks across the comms, “What the fuck was that?”

Phil holds his hands carefully away from him and everyone else. “I think it was me.”

 

*

They’re trying to do a medical exam on him while not accidentally taking down Headquarters. This means they’re working in the range, with the scanners brought from the lab in pieces and reassembled.

Banner is humming thoughtfully and running something handheld over Phil’s arms. “Could you…?”

Phil unbuttons his cuffs and slides his shirtsleeves up. 

“Thank you.”

Stark sniffs. “Look, this is clearly mechanical, not biological, so at the very least I should be allowed to-.”

Phil turns to try and see what Stark thinks he should be allowed to do and somewhere in between seeing the _blowtorch_ and taking a deep breath, he’s fired a hole in the wall.

“Is it me?” Stark asks. “Because I was the one in the air when you decided to shoot at the skyscraper too.”

Phil takes another breath. He hadn’t shot at the skyscraper. He doesn’t think he shot at Stark either, he thinks it was just the sky, but he can’t be sure. The things are burning hot around his arms and it could be- he needs to be calm. He closes his eyes and counts to ten.

The next voice comes from right in front of him. “Okay,” Clint says. “Hands out towards me, all right? Not Bruce, and not Tony.”

Phil brings his arms around in front of him, towards the far end of the shooting range. He interlocks his fingers and breathes in and out. “Get Thor,” he says. “Or Dr Foster. Engineering and bioscience alone won’t cut it today, I need someone with a theoretical research background.”

Someone behind him goes hurrying away. 

Stark protests, “I have a research background.”

Banner adds, “And Thor definitely doesn’t.”

“This is _magical_ ,” Phil answers, “or whatever the hell the weird science division are calling themselves today. Thor lived this, and Jane’s the only one who actually understands what he tells them about it.”

Clint hums. “This is why I stick to conventional weaponry, sir.”

“No one on earth has ever called you conventional, Barton.”

“True. So, are you going to open your eyes at any point?”

“I would – mostly – rather not accidentally shoot one of you.”

“You won’t,” Clint says, with entirely unwarranted certainty colouring his voice.

Phil holds his arms away from the general direction of Clint’s voice, and slowly opens his eyes. The heat from the rings has faded to dull warmth. “Apparently not.”

The corner of Clint’s mouth turns up. 

“And how exactly did you know he wouldn’t kill _you_?” Stark asks.

Clint shrugs. “Hulk always manages to keep from smashing Betty Ross.”

Phil closes his eyes again fleetingly. There is absolutely no way Stark is going to let something like that-

“Clint, did you just call yourself Coulson’s _girlfriend_?”

“Familiarity,” Phil interrupts, “after years of working missions together. Unconsciously designated a friendly: don’t shoot. You would not have been so lucky.”

Stark rolls his eyes as though there’s some possibility he’s actually offended by that remark, Clint grins at him and nods an almost imperceptible thanks to Phil, and it’s as if nothing happened at all. 

Thor and Jane turn up with a selection of SHIELD scientists and Phil finds himself in the unusual position of lab rat. It lends him fleeting sympathy towards Rogers and Banner, but other than that there are no revelations. Fury descends after a few hours and sends most of them home. He glares at Phil. “You’re staying here tonight.”

“Medical or quarters?”

“Find someplace under-populated. Try not to destroy the building in your sleep.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“You better.”

There are unused quarters in the sub-basements, near to one of the recent lab explosions. Phil gets someone to send his laptop down there and sets it up with the reports from today. He needs to file some of his own as well.

The lights don’t work properly down here, which is something else he should probably log. The fluorescents flicker at the edges, and the walls are grey with soot. He brings up a mental copy of the blueprints of the building, reminding himself which way runs up against the elevator shaft and which should just be earth.

Five minutes later, Barton appears out of the shadows. “I brought sandwiches.”

“Shouldn’t you be at the Mansion?”

He shrugs. “Still thinking of accidentally shooting me?”

Phil considers this. “It’s not an immediate plan.”

“Good. Move over, I want to see what Darcy’s added to the library.” He opens his laptop on the table and sits beside Phil.

“Do I want to know?”

“How strongly do you feel about possibly illegal file sharing?”

“Actually illegal, or circumventing copy protection illegal?

“Probably both.” Clint pages down the list of files. “Hey, Mythbusters.”

“I’m not sure where Mythbusters falls on the scale of essential milestones in popular culture, which is supposed to be the remit of the-.”

Clint looks at him, wounded. “ _Explosions_ , sir.”

Phil has never entirely understood how they don’t think they see enough explosions in their day-to-day lives.

Clint says, “Hey, can I…?” He nods at the exposed skin of Phil’s arms, cut across with the as-yet-unidentified metal.

Not sure how to refuse, seeing how both Banner and Stark have been over the area already today, Phil holds out his arm. Clint doesn’t have a scanner or a blowtorch. He covers the rings with his hands. “Like bits of gauntlets, maybe? Or wrist guards?” He rubs circles at the base of Phil’s palm, where it hits the metal.

“Maybe,” Phil says. “Put on your show, I have work to do.”

Clint releases Phil quickly. “Sure.” He turns on the episode and leans over to get the sandwiches. It takes him a moment to get settled again, curled in the corner of the chair. He needs the wall behind him, and Phil is willing to bet that it’s a holstered knife that Clint tucks beside him in the chair. The bow, at least, has been left in the armoury tonight. 

Phil suspects he is one of a very small subset of people who has seen both Natasha and Clint in deep sleep. The trick is not to be too quiet. Phil types, and doesn’t make any sudden movements, and sometimes this works. Midway through the second episode, Clint turns sideways in the chair. He murmurs something indistinct, which Phil translates correctly or not as, ‘don’t accidentally shoot me in my sleep.’

Phil taps Clint’s ankle. “Okay.”

 

*

He stays down in the basement the next day. They’re still trying to analyse the results of the tests they did on the rings – gauntlets – in the labs, but so far there’s nothing substantial.

It’s isolated down here. Phil knows, because he has network access and they need to check in, that Clint is on the range, Banner and Stark are in the lab with Jane Foster, and Rogers and Thor are sparring in the gym. But Phil is used to working in the central offices, where he’ll know instantly if something happens. Phil spends a lot of time wishing for more quiet but this is unsettling.

He makes a start on the paperwork from yesterday. There are forms to cover the initial incident (missing reports from five of the six Avengers – Thor’s has already been submitted for some reason), forms to log the discovery of the gauntlets, and forms to establish Phil’s interaction with them. 

Three hours later, there are piles of C-345s, a slightly smaller array of D-192s, and the singular M-19. But he still can’t find the folder he needs. Phil hunts through the pile immediately beside him, paging through them quickly. He gets through all of the files with no sign of the missing folder. This means that he’s going to have to call upstairs and get someone to bring it down to him. A flicker of frustration and suddenly the edges of the folder are singed, a glow warming to flame. Phil drops it. He stamps on the thin cardboard until he’s certain it’s not going to reignite.

Natasha’s short laugh doesn’t come as any more of a surprise than anything else Natasha does. She says, “If you continue like that, you’re going to destroy the notion that you enjoy paperwork.”

“I don’t enjoy it as much as they think,” he answers.

“I know that. But no one else does.”

“It’s necessary,” Phil says. “We need records. Otherwise we’re just…”

Natasha raises her eyebrow. She knows only too well the particular complexities of bureaucracy, but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.

Phil likes his job. There’s enough of a balance between running field operations and overseeing the offices here. Paperwork is a part of both of those tasks, and Phil sees no problem with that. Paperwork means things get done on time, on budget, and when the things in question involve doing your part to stand between the world and chaos, Phil doesn’t underestimate their importance.

Natasha holds out a folder to him. “Were you looking for this?”

Phil takes it. “I would ask how you knew that, but I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.”

“Just trying to keep you occupied, sir. Before you start setting fire to building.”

“Think the Director’s going to let me back up top any time soon?”

She smiles at him. “I wouldn’t start with sending him singed paperwork.”

Phil acknowledges this, and begins copying the information over to a fresh form.

 

*

As with everything else, the things stop working at just about the most inconvenient moment possible.

Phil is in the field, in the back of a SHIELD van, because it’s been a week since the last time he set something on fire and the scientists are no closer to getting these things off him. Fury doesn’t agree, exactly, but he doesn’t stop Phil either. 

On the monitors, he can see Thor and Hulk doing their level best to smash _something_ down to the ground. He radios, “Can someone get me a better visual?”

There’s a red blur on his camera and a then a file pops onto the screen. Stark exhales heavily. “That’s officially as close as I’m getting.”

Phil examines the image. “Fair enough.”

It’s working its way further down the street, towards the perimeter of SHIELD agents that includes Phil in this van.

Rogers calls, “We need to head it off.” He moves forward with Iron Man, trying to get around it and stop it getting past them all.

Hawkeye and Widow have gone quiet, presumably looking for a better angle for a shot.

The thing surges forward, past the first line Rogers and Stark are making. Phil gets out of the van, readying the secondary line of agents. He puts his hand on his gun, catching the metal cuff on his belt. It occurs to him then that it might be a better weapon than just putting a few rounds into this monster. Fury may disagree in the debriefing, but Phil has about five seconds to make the decision so he makes the best one he can. “Everybody down!” he calls, sharp and clear.

The agents pull back to a step behind him, and there’s an open path between Iron Man and Captain America. Phil lifts his arm and fires.

The force does knock the thing back, if only for a moment or two. It gives Iron Man time to get above it; Phil takes another shot. 

By the tenth or twelfth hit, the metallic heat around Phil’s arms has dulled to body temp. He takes one more shot and feels the metal unwinding from his arms, falling to the road with a muted click. “I’m out,” he calls, drawing his side arm and hoping.

The creature rears up, Thor takes a swing, and it falls like its strings were cut. Thor looks at it suspiciously, “I did not do that.”

“Don’t be so modest, big guy,” Stark tells him. “Although, seriously, what just happened?”

Widow radios in serenely. “Base, this is Widow. Bio-control unit discovered and destroyed. Hawkeye and I hope that helped.”

Rogers laughs. Phil just shakes his head. “Come back in now.”

“Yes, sir.” Phil waits for the two of them to reappear. Natasha is pushing a man in front of her. The man’s arms are tied behind his back and he’s spitting curses. Phil looks up to see Clint following behind her up high, making a jump across the rooftop.

Stark looks at the metal bands, lying on the ground near Phil. His voice carries, slightly distorted through the faceplate. “These things run out of juice? Pity. If you’d stayed all powered-up maybe you could have joined the good fight full-time.”

Phil rolls his eyes but it’s Clint’s voice that breaks radio silence. “As opposed to what, exactly?”

This is exactly what Phil means about inconvenient moments.

 

*

There are things Phil pushes into the box marked minor annoyances (Stark's Daddy-issues, Thor's inability to filter) and things that might affect the way the team runs (Rogers's dislocation, Stark's PTSD, the entire Hulk project). Where Barton's power issues end up on any given day is a matter for some other Gods. Sometimes it's a badge of pride: the way he's here on merit, not by birth or chemical or machines. And some days Phil watches him out here on the range working til his fingers bleed.

“Enough,” Phil says. “Go get yourself cleaned up.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“It’s that bad if I say it’s that bad.”

“I know my own-.”

“Barton. Enough.”

Clint sets his bow down and peels his glove and guards off. He tosses them aside with a disgusted noise. There’s sweat darkening the hair at his brow; Phil can feel the heat radiating from him when Clint sits down close. 

“Are we going to talk about this?” Phil asks mildly.

“Talk about what, sir?”

Phil didn’t really think it would be that easy. “Stark has the suit, you have the bow. It’s the same thing. You know that.”

“It’s not the same. _You_ know that.” Clint brings his arms up across his chest, fist settled over his heart.

Phil supposes that it isn’t. 

When Phil doesn’t say anything more, Clint sighs. “It doesn’t bug Natasha. You ever notice that?”

“It doesn’t always bother you.”

“No.”

Phil phrases it carefully. “Do you want off the team? Not that I’m letting you, because they need you there, but if you could-?”

Clint seems to contemplate this. “I follow Captain America into battle. Captain America. You know what that’s like? Come on, Phil, you were as much of a fanboy as Stark before they dug him out of the ice. You would give that up? I get up every day and go to work with superheroes.”

Phil leans briefly into Clint’s shoulder. He doesn’t say ‘you are one’ because that’s not something Clint is going to hear. He wants to take Clint’s hand in his, because he can see from the way the fingers are curled that they’re hurting him. Clint’s hands are rough; Phil knows this because the first time Clint touched him Phil had just fallen off the side of a building and Clint moved with what at the time had seemed astonishing speed. They didn’t shake hands when they first met – Clint just one man in a team Phil had been assigned to lead – so Phil remembers the rush of air as he dropped and Clint’s strong hand grabbing him before he could drop out of reach. Clint had tumbled most of the way over the edge himself, hooking his knee over the ridge with his whole body bent backwards against the wall. 

Phil has his own standards of heroism. He says, “Go and get yourself cleaned up then.”

Clint nods and says, “Another minute, sir?”

“Take whatever time you need. But no more shooting tonight.” Phil lets himself pat Clint’s hand, just once, where it is resting on his knee. The skin is rough, and his knuckles are curled tight. 

 

*

Clint and Tony have clearly made their peace at some point, because they walk to Phil’s office together. Stark says, “Natasha said if we didn’t get you out of here by eight she was coming back herself.”

Phil looks at the work he has yet to do. It’s not getting finished tonight anyway. “She’s at the bar already?”

Clint rocks back on his heels. “She left with Darcy about an hour ago. And Agent Hill, I think.”

“Fine,” Phil says, and pushes the papers aside. He ignores the flicker of surprise across Stark’s face. 

He follows them to the bar. It’s oddly companionable, listening to the two of them bicker as they walk. Up until this started, Clint didn’t play well with others any better than Stark claims to, but teamwork has brought out something new in him. Phil wonders at the effect it might have had on his own habits. He hasn’t gone out for drinks after work with any regularity in years. He has been travelling with SHIELD for most of those, and there wasn’t much opportunity to develop lasting personal relationships. Truth be told, this occasionally ignited flirtation with Clint is the longest relationship he’s had since his twenties. For other people, that might be a depressing thought.

They’re at the bar. Stark opens a tab and gives an instruction to ‘just keep the drinks coming’, wilfully ignoring both Clint and Phil’s attempts to stop him. Stark follows Phil to the table, while Clint crosses the room to eye up the abilities of the men playing darts. Phil hopes he remembers not to laugh too hard this time. Stark looks at the three women – Darcy, Maria and Natasha – and grins. “Ladies. Talking about boys?”

Darcy laughs and Maria rolls her eyes.

Stark eyes them suspiciously. “God, you actually were talking about them. So, fill me in. Was it me? It’s cool if it’s me.” He slides into the booth beside Darcy.

She elbows him. “Jesus Christ, no.”

“Come on. I’m an Avenger, that has to earn me a little credit.”

“Way less than you would think. Some of us have to work the clean-up on the messes you guys make.”

Stark shrugs philosophically. “Believe it or not, not the first time I’ve heard that line. So. Spill. One of Agent Hill’s ever so brooding strike team guys? That’s basically just an Avenger who didn’t try hard enough.” He frowns then, and looks across the bar, checking for Clint who is probably not close enough to have heard him. It’s not that Stark (always) means to antagonise people – sometimes he just doesn’t think. Either Maria or Natasha kicks him all the same.

Phil keeps his attention mostly on Clint, who seems to notice and starts heading back towards them. Phil does tell Darcy, “Don’t date field agents.”

She smiles brightly at him. “But they have all those shiny guns.”

“We’ll get you weapons training and you can have your own gun.” She can’t. She’s dangerous enough with her only borderline-legal taser. 

“You’re not actually- I mean, there’s no regulation, right?”

“No, nothing official.” Phil says, “I’m just giving you the benefit of my experience.” 

She blinks. “Wait. What?”

Phil looks at his glass. He may already be more drunk than he realised. “Forget I said that.”

“That’s not going to happen now!”

He sighs and shrugs. “I was twenty-six or twenty-seven. I was green enough to mistake arrogance for confidence. It’s not a story for the ages.”

“They were older?” She’s careful with the pronouns.

Phil doesn’t bother being careful. It wasn’t really a secret to begin with, and it’s not going to stay one now. All the people around this table are too good for that. “Yes, but I outranked him.” He recites the story quickly. Phil doesn’t come out well in most of it. “I was working ops on a mission, checking visuals. He made a call and I didn’t back him. The ranking agent went with me. When he came back afterwards we got into a fight about it. He got in a lucky swing and blacked my eye. I broke his nose and got him reassigned.” Phil smiles. He’s not embarrassed about that part. “Greenland was lovely that time of year. He’s in the DOD now.”

Darcy glares. “Asshole.”

“Him or me?”

“Him! I would have given him worse than a broken nose.”

Natasha nods emphatically.

Phil looks between the two of them. “Well, when you tase some worthless field agent into submission, let me know. I’m sure we can find somewhere to send them.”

Darcy temples her fingers together. “I will totally bear that in mind.”

Tony is giving Phil a strange look. 

“What?” Phil asks. “Surprised I date, or that I date men?” There’s no point being coy about it now.

“Surprised you dated anyone stupid enough to hit you,” Tony answers, quickly enough that he clearly didn’t think about what he was saying.

“He only did it once,” Phil says. Phil makes mistakes, but he rarely repeats them.

“Still,” Tony says. His fingers drum restlessly on the table. “And now no more men in uniform, huh? Shit.”

Clint’s voice comes drifting from somewhere above Phil’s head, tinny like it’s making its way through the radio. “That’s not really fair to field agents, sir.” He sits down across from Phil and says, dangerously close to a confession, “And anyway, you’ve definitely-.” Clint knows, better than most, that even Phil breaks his own rules occasionally.

Phil needs another drink. “I didn’t say I spent the next twenty years celibate, Barton. I said I don’t date anyone who’s going to resent the fact that I call the shots.”

Something - complicated - makes Clint’s mouth tighten. “No one resents you, sir.”

Phil smiles. “Yes they do. The trick is not to care.”

 

*

Fury is teleconferencing with the World Security Council. No one else is allowed inside, but Maria waits with Phil on the other side of the doorway. She smirks. “I heard Iron Man was spotted buzzing sailboats sixty miles out over the Pacific today. Are you missing your exploding superpowers yet?”

Phil stands straighter against the wall. “Apparently there were suspicions of piracy.”

She coughs. “Seriously, Phil, does anyone actually have the ability to rein these guys in?”

“Director Fury.”

She looks at the door. “He has his bigger things to worry about than why #themightythor is trending on Twitter.”

Phil doesn’t get out his phone. “They want him to throw the first pitch on opening day.”

She snorts.

Phil nods. “I don’t think they’ve thought it through either. Though Rogers is uncharacteristically gleeful at the thought of Thor taking a bite out of Yankee Stadium.”

“I think we’ve had enough press coverage of property damage, don’t you?”

“I’m having him practice with Stark. If he can’t pitch it over home plate without knocking out the wall behind, I’ll call in a veto.”

“How are you going to do that?” It’s not _quite_ a pointed question, but it’s not innocent either.

Phil says, “I can always call in an emergency somewhere out of the city. Micronesia, maybe?” It needs to be far enough away, and also somewhere that won’t provoke an international incident.

Maria mulls this over. “We could send them on a hunt for more vibranium. That would keep them occupied for a decade or two, right?”

“Stark would only cook some more up in his workshop instead.”

Phil suspects sometimes that this only works because they all pretend that it has to. He is not empowered to stop them in the same way a mall-cop is not empowered to stop a thug with a gun. Right is on his side, but if the six of them wanted to do something badly enough, Phil’s lawful authority wouldn’t necessarily count for much to stop them. Phil can tell the Yankees to pull Thor’s invite to throw the pitch, he can tell the Coastguard to take a shot at Stark the next time he heads out to sea, but if it came right down to it, it would probably take longer to muster the necessary numbers of agents and weaponry than it would take the Avengers to do whatever it was they wanted to do. 

People think that Rogers is the balance there, that Rogers is a soldier and obeys the orders he’s given. And he does, ninety nines times in a hundred. People forget that Rogers’s first act of war (after the chorus lines) was against the orders of his superior officer. Phil wouldn’t dream of saying that Captain America made the wrong choice – it worked, and they got the men out alive. But it is important to note that the Avengers team is largely made up of smart people who believe that they know what’s right, and what’s best. This may be the case, but it doesn’t equip them to be part of a bigger picture. Phil worries sometimes that the most dangerous thing to come out of the Loki situation was that the Avengers figured out that they were capable of all pulling the same direction.

They work with SHIELD because they need to work with someone, because they need intel or contacts or someone to clean up the mess afterwards. They work with SHIELD and they follow most of the important rules because the other side of that coin is Vanko, is the Abomination. 

Phil knows all this, and on their good days he has made his peace with it. The alternative is worse. 

Maria inclines her head. “Fine, but if Thor leaves a hole in the right field wall at Yankee Stadium, I want to trade him out of my three.”

Phil nods. “Sure. You can have Stark.” She glares at him.

Fury wrenches the door open between them. “With me. Now. Get your teams ready.”

Stark is already on site, apparently having exhausted his desire to prey on pirate ships. He greets them cheerfully. “Boss man! And you brought your right-hand man. Oh, and your left-hand woman. This must be serious.”

Fury doesn’t stop walking. “I was in the middle of a World Security Council meeting when somebody called me to say we had a possible bomb threat in New York.”

Stark sobers. “What sort of bomb are we talking about?”

“That’s the problem. The man who called it in claims to _be_ the bomb.”

 

*

People turn themselves into weapons. This is the world they live in now. Phil doesn’t blame Stark for that. He doesn’t even blame Rogers, who might have been the first. But this is where they are. It doesn’t need to be an army any more. It can be one person, tied up to the destructive capacity of battalions of their best men, strolling into a building and starting a countdown.

He’s glowing, ringed round in blue and even Thor has lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Stark is trying to keep him talking. “Tell me how you got started, come on. Just a hint.”

Banner is in the field as himself for once. “The human body doesn’t have the kind of containment you need. You must have worked on that first, yes?”

The two of them keep a gentle ping-pong of theories going, from one side to the other with a terrorist in between. The man’s name is Glen Jenkins, he had been halfway through a PhD ten years ago when his sister died, and no one knows how he turned himself into a bomb. No one knows what’s going to happen if he goes off.

Phil is coordinating the evacuation of the surrounding area. They have no idea of range, so they’re starting with five city blocks and moving out. Logistically it’s a nightmare – it’s late afternoon and the office blocks are full of workers, plus the traffic of anyone going home early to pick up kids from school. 

Phil checks in with Rogers. “You need to keep him talking, keep it contained.”

“I don’t think we have much longer. Iron Man thinks we might have a shot of taking him out before he can-.”

“We’re not done here.”

“Dr Banner doesn’t know if there’ll be warning before it happens. We shouldn’t give him the opportunity to follow this through.”

“Hold until I give the word.”

Rogers says, “Sir,” and Phil goes back to coordinating the evacuation. It’s ninety seconds later when he hears Rogers again. “Okay, no more time. Iron Man, go.”

There’s a sharp bang, the scanners go wild, and then silence. 

Phil can’t get a bead on any of them. He calls them on radio, one by one, with no response. He looks at Sitwell. “Any sign of-?”

“No obvious contamination. Area seems clear but we’ll have to wait for tech to get a better idea of what just happened. Any word?”

“No. Avengers, this is Coulson. Sitrep.”

One of them coughs. “Situation normal. Bringing him in now. We’re going to need some kind of containment.” That’s still Banner’s voice, so whatever exploded, it wasn’t dramatic enough to force an adrenaline spike. 

“Fine,” Phil says. “Talk to the techs.”

“Sir?” Natasha betrays nothing over comms.

“I need to stay with the evacuation. No one’s cleared the area to go back in yet.”

“Okay.”

“I want to see all six of you in the morning.”

“Debrief?” Rogers asks.

“We’re going to have a conversation about disobeying orders in the field.” Phil’s voice is steady; his hand is by his gun. He is not going to have this argument right now. 

“We had to make the call-.” Rogers protests. “He was going to-.”

“We were still _evacuating_ ,” Phil bites. “If you had called wrong, do you know how many people would be dead by now? If you believed your intel overrode that concern, you should have gone through me first.”

Ninety seconds where all six of them were silent on comms, and then Rogers made the call. It doesn’t matter if he was right. It wasn’t a field decision. 

Thor argues, “The man was powered by mystical energy-.”

“Jesus Christ.” Phil sees the way the other agents back away from him. “ _Stop talking_. All of you. Stop talking. You’re all so fucking-.” He cuts himself off. He’s not having a breakdown in public. “Tomorrow morning.”

 

*

Phil rides back to SHIELD with the last van, once he knows he can’t be any more use at the site. Darcy tells him they have Jenkins in what is believed to be secure custody, and the Avengers are all back on base. No injuries. She’s working on gathering the incident reports for him. Darcy tilts her head. “I think maybe they wanted to talk to you?”

“Not now.” He nods at her and heads into his office. It’s a nice office, as SHIELD facilities go. It has no internal windows, and the door locks.

There is a line of coffee cups on his desk, SHIELD issue and newly cleaned and returned by one of the assistants. Phil picks the first one up, tests the heft of it in the palm of his hand, and hurls it at the wall. He sends the other two after it, listening to the crash as they splinter and crash to the floor. 

His office door bursts open while the third is falling. Phil turns on his heel, going for his gun and raising it before he's thought of why anyone would break through the lock on his door and not set off any other alarms.

It's them, of course. They crowd around the door, looking in at him and for a second Phil is so furious he can't think. He takes a breath and says, “I locked the door for a reason.”

None of them say a word and Phil looks back at them, flushed and comically shocked. Clint's eyes are wide and his breath is coming too fast. Phil runs his hand over his face. They heard the noise and- they're here to rescue him. They heard the noise and came running. He looks at the six of them: Clint and Natasha closest, the fastest reaction times if not the fastest sprint; Steve and Thor next, all adrenaline and simple reaction; and Bruce and Tony last, not quite so shocked, because about half-way to the door they figured out what had happened. In truth, Clint and Natasha might have worked that out too, with enough time, but they would have moved before thinking.

Rogers says, “Sir, we-.”

“Tomorrow,” Phil says. “I don't want to see any of you before tomorrow.”

“Sir-.”

“If just once, the six of you could learn to obey a _direct order_ , I would very much appreciate it.”

Rogers pulls up like he’s been slapped and Clint’s expression slams shut, looking at the carpet at Phil’s feet. Phil doesn’t look at the others. He calls past them into the bullpen. “Mr Fawsett, a pan and brush please. Ms Lewis, I need those reports, and a copy of the press statement if you’re done with it.”

Clint waits longest by the door. “Sir.”

“Tomorrow, Agent Barton. Not before.”

 

*

Because the universe hates him, when Maria and Darcy drag him out of the office late that night, they take him to the nearest bar. And there around the first table are the very people he doesn’t want to see. The bar is about equidistant between Headquarters and the Mansion, it’s the one they usually go to when they’re not thinking about where to go, so what else was he expecting?

Darcy says quickly, “I’ll get the drinks.”

Maria tugs Phil by the elbow, getting him to the table farthest away. “Sit. Talk. Or don’t talk. We can just get hammered, it’s been a while.”

“If you and I both get drunk, that’ll be the moment the aliens invade.”

“True. So?”

“You were right. They don’t follow orders and I can’t make them.”

“And?”

“… and they came to rescue me from flying coffee cups.”

She stares at him. “Okay. Which one of those is actually the issue?”

Darcy comes back. “So. I’m not taking sides and if I was obviously I’m on your side, boss, but he made with the eyes.”

Phil sighs. “Whose eyes are these?” 

She slides him a drink. There’s a napkin underneath it, with writing in heavy block script: _It’s tomorrow. C_

Phil looks at his watch. It’s past midnight already. He turns to Darcy. “Did he at least pay for the drink, or is he just using you to pass notes?”

She shrugs. “One of them paid. Tony might have opened a tab. Or he might have just bought the bar. It wasn’t clear.”

Phil takes a breath and lets it out slowly. It’s tomorrow already. He tells Maria, “It’s the combination. That’s the issue.” It’s the way they argue with his orders – resent them – but come running because something might have attacked him in his office. 

Maria nods, unsurprised. This is one of the many reasons she doesn’t want to work with them. Apparently, Maria is ultimately far more professional than Phil can manage to be.

Phil looks over his shoulder to find Barton. Meeting the man’s eyes, Phil takes a drink. Clint nods at him.

Phil turns back to Maria and Darcy but will admit to not being completely shocked when, five or ten minutes later, the team makes their way over. Five of them sit but Clint stands at the side beside Phil. “You want another drink?”

Maria laughs and taps the table in front of Phil. “I want to trade you for him. My guys never buy me drinks.”

“No,” Phil says shortly. 

“Your guys are scared of you thinking they’re coming on to you,” Stark says. “And who’s trading what for who?”

Darcy takes a sip of her own drink – something bright green and frankly terrifying. “You’ve never heard them do this?”

“Do what?”

Her smile should be a warning, but Stark is not always that smart. “Decide who gets first pick when Fury decides the six of you need sent to different corners of the country.”

Maria puts in, “I’m staying in New York, Phil, so you’re going to have to take the other three to the West Coast. You’ve got Stark anyway – you can hang out in Malibu. Get a tan.”

Phil glares levelly at her. 

Rogers is looking between the three of them. “Does Fury really think-?”

Maria says, “Fury doesn’t think anything. Phil’s the one who's sick of you all.” Phil is beginning to suspect that this is Maria and Darcy coming to his defence, which is apparently the kind of day he’s having.

Phil explains, “It was a joke. Hypothetical.”

Stark hums. “But hypothetically, you picked me? I’m touched.”

Phil can’t let that one go. “Agent Hill had Captain Rogers. There wasn’t much point in splitting the team up and leaving the two of you on the same side.”

Stark’s gaze flicks down the table. “Touché. Still.”

“I’m curious,” Natasha asks. “How this split went. Hypothetically.”

Maria answers before Phil can stop her. “I had you, Rogers and Thor. Phil had Stark, Barton and Banner.”

Natasha smiles. “Interesting.” Phil shouldn’t let Maria anywhere near his team. These are the things that happen. Natasha says, “It’s very… balanced.” She looks at Phil. “You had the second pick, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“You tried to keep it even. Did you take Tony as your first?”

Maria answers for him, “He had Hawkeye first.”

There is an odd silence from above Phil’s head. Clint is still standing by the edge of the table, at too much of an awkward angle for Phil to look up and see his face. Phil looks at Natasha instead, whose expression is quietly fond. She says, “Obviously.”

Clint’s answer, when it comes, is, “He had Bruce, I need to be on the same side as that because of the-.”

Phil gives in. “No. Not the reason. Sit down, Clint.” He shuffles across the seat so there is enough room for Clint beside him. There is a flush to the tops of Clint’s cheeks; his mouth is twisted uncertainly. Their shoulders brush together and Phil doesn’t move away.

Stark coughs and goes to get another round of drinks.

Rogers says again, “You wouldn’t really split the team up?”

Phil leans back in the chair. “Maria won’t take you, you’re safe.” 

Maria gives him a frankly disbelieving stare, but that is Phil’s answer and for right now he is sticking to it. He’s still angry, and when it is properly tomorrow, he will let them know just what he means by orders in the field. Now, though, he takes another drink, and tries not to notice the way Clint hasn’t lost the expression of quiet confusion. That is another conversation they will have to finish later.

 

*

They have intel that a small biotech company are starting to look into bioweaponry on the side. Stark wants to go in all guns blazing, because he takes weapons manufacturing personally.

Phil shakes his head. “We’re doing this quietly. If they get wind of us, they’ll destroy everything and start again somewhere else. Romanoff, Barton, you’re up.”

Clint grins. “Just like the old days.”

Rogers asks, “You’re sending them in alone?”

“He’s sending us in together,” Natasha corrects. 

“You’ll be on standby,” Phil assures him. “But I’d like to do this quietly.”

“I have broken into a few military bases before,” Rogers argues.

Clint is still smiling. “Not the way we do it.”

 

*

Phil doesn’t much like waiting. It’s another one of those things that because he does it often enough, people assume he doesn’t mind. He sits in the field base and watches the location markers that are Clint and Natasha move across the screen. They're deep into the compound already.

Stark drops into a chair behind Phil. “You know,” Stark says, “the whole first month, I just assumed he didn’t talk.”

Phil keeps his ‘hmm’ noncommittal. 

“Granted, you were talking to someone on comms who claimed to be called Hawkeye. I presumed you were talking to yourself and just named your imaginary friends after people you knew… and also I guess had a hitherto unrevealed talent for voices. Anyway-”

“Are you planning on reaching a point any time soon?” Phil asks.

Stark pulls up short. “Are they doing okay?”

Phil moves his chair aside so Stark can see the screen. It’s a little early but he says, “Hawkeye. Status report.”

Clint exhales lightly, or perhaps it’s laughter. “You’re ninety-seconds fast, sir, what am I going to do with you?”

“Iron Man was worried about you.”

There’s a moment of silence before the laughter this time. “Really?”

Stark frowns and steals a mic. “Don’t get all offended, Barton, I was just checking in.”

“Not offended. Hang on.” There are the faint thuds of Clint’s footsteps hurrying from one point to another. “Widow, are you in position?”

“Thirty seconds. Okay, I’m in. Are you seeing this?”

Phil looks at the information she’s sending rolling down his screen. This does not look good. Stark whistles. “ _Now_ can we send Steve in?”

“Not yet. Hawkeye, are you over the labs?”

“I am now. Counting ten goons, and one lab coat. Seems like a lot of protection for one room.”

“Looking at what Widow’s giving me, I don’t think it’s enough.” Stark nods apprehensive agreement.

“Are we doing this now?” Clint asks.

Phil looks at it. The chatter says that they’re planning something soon. Chatter could be wrong, but they might not get another shot at this. He asks, “Can you secure the samples?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. Can you get down without getting yourself shot and without giving them a chance to get away with that material?”

“Yeah, I can. But it’s your call, sir. I go on your mark.”

Phil nods at Stark. “Tell Rogers and Thor to get ready.” Stark relays that and Phil opens up a private channel. “Hawkeye?”

“Sir.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“No sir.”

Phil goes back to all comms. “On my mark. Go.”

 

*

Phil looks around the room: Natasha is lying on the couch with her feet dangling over one arm; Tony is playing chess against a combined Steve-JARVIS team; Bruce and Thor are apparently engrossed in Field of Dreams, which Phil doesn’t choose to question. Clint is sitting on the other couch, watching the doorway. There’s a graze on the side of his neck, but he’s otherwise untouched by his heroics tonight. 

Phil says, “You. Get up.”

Clint blinks at him. “What did I do?”

“Up.”

“If we’re off-duty, can you still order me around?”

“I can always order you around, it’s one of the great perks of being me. Get up.”

Clint stands up, looking mildly perturbed when Phil crosses the room to crowd him against the wall. “Sir?”

“What did I say to you? The last thing I said to you, in fact, what could very well have been the last thing anyone _ever_ said to you, before you went down into that room?”

“You said, ‘don’t get killed’.”

“Yes.”

“And I didn’t!”

“And why was that? I’m just curious, what was going through your head right before you- because I don’t think it was don’t get killed.” Phil had expected Clint to isolate the materials and get clear. He hadn’t expected him to go in with arrows flying, holding his position in the centre of the lab so they could bring the scientist in for questioning.

“No,” Clint admits. 

“So what was it?” The team had been coming but for too many minutes Phil was listening on comms while Clint tried to pick off oncoming attackers. He had taken six, while Steve got the last four when he broke through.

Clint tilts his head. “Well. First off I was thinking that I could make the shots. All six of them. Because I was thinking that I’m an Agent of SHIELD, that I have the best intel in the world, the best team and the best command. I was thinking that I’m an Avenger.” He exhales. “But mostly, sir, I’ve got to be honest. Mostly I was thinking that I’m just that fucking good.” His grin creeps across his face until he’s shining with it.

“Okay then.”

Clint leans forward and whispers in Phil’s ear. “I know it’s been a while but tell me you don’t want me to fuck you right now.”

Arrogance disguised as confidence and maybe Phil is just as screwed up now as he was at twenty-six but Clint leans away again and shrugs against the wall. “Or the other way round. I’m easy.” He taps his fingers against his leg. “I’m still your first pick?”

Confidence disguised as arrogance and Clint hadn’t missed a shot today. Phil says, “You are always my first pick.” He grabs Clint’s hand, smoothing out the tension in his knuckles and across his palm.

Clint’s smile this time is smaller, a twitch of movement on his face before it settles back to solemnity. “Good to know.”

From the couch, Stark asks, “Explain to me how it is that in this house, it’s Clint and Coulson who’re having the best sex-life?”

Phil gives that a moment, pulling Clint towards the stairs. He leans past to look over Clint’s shoulder and maintains his steadiest deadpan. “We’re just that fucking good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Back when this was supposed to be a short ficlet about Coulson temporarily getting powers and reflecting that he far preferred his real job, the unofficial crack soundtrack was the Futurama Bureaucrat song. That's where the title's from.


End file.
